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Naughty Dog Ready To Call Time On Uncharted Series After A Thief’s End

Naughty Dog continues to fuel speculation that Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End will act as the curtain call for not just the swashbuckling adventures of Nate, but the series as a whole.

That’s according to Lead Game Designer Robert Cogburn, who spoke to Kotaku about the studio’s ambition to create something different following the launch of A Thief’s End in March.

“This will be our fourth Uncharted game,” Cogburn told Kotaku. “These games are hard to make. Particularly with a character like Nathan Drake in a world that’s fairly grounded, it’s a challenge to consider how much more we can expand the universe while adhering to those sorts of rules.”

Beyond that, Cogburn also acknowledges that while Uncharted 4 will test the parameters of the PlayStation 4 performance-wise – as evidenced by the stunning trailer from PlayStation Experience 2015 – Naughty Dog as a studio is also itching to challenge itself to create something new. Surely a sequel to The Last of Us is on the cards, right?

“This is gonna be the fourth time we start answering stuff like, ‘How do we make hand-grabs visible? What do we do to scale the combat experience? What are the interesting puzzles we can be introducing in the moment-to-moment as the player’s experiencing this narrative?'” he said. “That’s not to say the questions will be the same in games we make going forward, but as a studio we grow tired of answering those same types of questions in the same fiction. It’s gonna be fun for us to really embark on new ideas and start fleshing those out [in a new series].”

Indeed, the success of The Last of Us, which launched as a new IP in 2013, has encouraged Naughty Dog to test the waters for new properties, and Cogburn admitted that “things might’ve been reconsidered” had the post-apocalyptic survival title bombed. But where could ND possibly go next?

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s Endwill seemingly bring the curtain down for Nate’s adventures on March 18, 2016.